We do not know to what extent it is resident, that is, present the year around, but believe that it is quite extensively so. One may be in the woods for a dull week in January, and see never a Warbler; but on a bright day in the same region he may encounter numbers of them. I have seen them playing about the dense firs on Semiahmoo Point (Lat. 49°) on Christmas Day, and I feel sure that large numbers of them spend the winter in the tree-tops, possibly moping, after the well known fashion of the Sooty Grouse.
It is these winter residents which become active in early spring. In the vicinity of Tacoma, where they have been studied most carefully, it is found that April is the typical nesting month, and one at least of the four eggs of a nest found April 9th, 1905, must have been deposited in March. Along about the 25th of April great numbers of Audubons arrive from the South, and one may see indolent companies of them lounging thru the trees, while resident birds are busy feeding young. These migrants may be destined for our own mountains as well as British Columbia. East-side birds are likewise tardy in arrival, for pine trees are inadequate shelter for wintry experiments.
The absorbing duty of springtime is nesting, and to this art the Audubons give themselves with becoming ardor. The female does the work, while the male cheers her with song, and not infrequently trails about after her, useless but sympathetic. Into a certain tidy grove near Tacoma the bird-man entered one crisp morning in April. The trees stood about like decorous candlesticks, but the place hummed with Kinglets and clattered with Juncoes and Audubons. One Audubon, a female, advertised her business to all comers. I saw her, upon the ground, wrestling with a large white chicken-feather, and sputtering excitedly between tussles. The feather was evidently too big or too stiff or too wet for her proper taste; but finally she flew away across the grove with it, chirping merrily. And since she repeated her precise course three times, it was an easy matter to trace her some fifteen rods straight to her nest, forty feet up on an ascending fir branch.
When the nest was presumed to be ripe, I ascended. It was found settled into the foliage and steadied by diverging twigs at a point some six or seven feet out along the limb. None of the branches in the vicinity were individually safe, but by dint of standing on one, sitting on another, and clinging to a third, I made an equitable distribution of avoirdupois and grasped the treasure. Perhaps in justice the supporting branches should have broken just here, but how could you enjoy the rare beauty of this handsome structure unless we brought it to you?
The nest is deeply cup-shaped, with a brim slightly turned in, composed externally of fir twigs, weed-tops, flower-pedicels, rootlets, catkins, etc., while the interior is heavily lined with feathers which in turn are bound and held in place by an innermost lining of horse-hairs. One feather was left to curl daintily over the edge, and so partially conceal the eggs,—four spotted beauties.
Taken in Tacoma. Photo by the Author.
NEST AND EGGS OF AUDUBON WARBLER.
These Warblers are connoisseurs in feathers, and if one had all their nests submitted to him, he could make a rough assignment of locality for each according to whether feathers of Oregon Ruffed Grouse, Franklin Grouse, Ptarmigan, or domestic fowls were used.
In the wet region the birds appear to nest in fir trees only, and they are as likely to use the lowermost limb as any. There is little attempt at concealment, and Bowles reports a nest only ten feet high over a path used daily by hundreds of people in Tacoma. On the dry side of the mountains the Warblers avail themselves freely of deciduous trees and bushes for nesting sites. A nest on Cannon Hill in Spokane was placed at the lowermost available crotch of a young elm tree near the sidewalk and not ten feet up—as bold as a Robin!
According to Mr. Bowles, Audubon Warblers evince a great fondness for their chosen nesting haunts, and will return to them year after year, often to the same tree, and sometimes to the same branch. “They are the most solicitous of all the Washington Warblers concerning their eggs, sometimes coming to meet the intruder as he climbs toward the nest. At such times the alarm note of the female soon brings the male, when, should the nest contain incubated eggs or young, both birds crawl among the branches, frequently within reach, with wings and tail spread, in absolute forgetfulness of their own safety.”